Phenol-stacked carbon nanotubes: A new approach to genomic DNA isolation from plants

Extraction of intact quality DNA from plant tissues, especially those rich in secondary metabolites, is often challenging. Literally, hundreds of different DNA isolation protocols from various plant species have been published over the last decades. Although many commercial DNA isolation kits are convenient and designed to be safe, their cost and availability cause limitations in small molecular labs in many developing countries. In nearly all protocols and DNA isolation kits, phenol and chloroform are used to precipitate various classes of impurities. However, phenol is partially soluble in water, resulting in the co-existence of proteins in upper (aqueous) phases. This phenomenon results in the contamination of the nucleic acids and low quality DNA. Nanotechnology advances have helped many areas of molecular biology such as the development of new diagnosis and purification kits. In this study, for the first time, we report a different approach to isolate DNA from plants based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The results show that the phenol reagent stack on CNTs can effectively remove proteins, polysaccharides and other polyphenol constituents. The A260/A280nm absorbance ratios of isolated DNA samples were 1.9 and 1.8 for chamomile and opium plants, respectively, indicating the high purity of the isolated DNA. DNA yield was more than two times the standard Doyle and Doyle method. Furthermore, the isolated DNA proved amenable to PCR amplication, using Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analysis.